News of the Day From Across the Globe, Feb. 7

Chronicle News Services

Published
4:21 pm PST, Friday, February 6, 2015

1 Europe flooding: Floods forced hundreds of people from their homes in Albania and Macedonia, while heavy snow and strong winds caused traffic havoc Friday in Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia. A 38-year old woman drowned in Albania after she was swept away from her home by floodwaters near Pogradec, police said Friday. Some 600 families have been evacuated in four southern districts in Albania after flooding covered more than 42,000 acres and killed about 3,500 sheep and cattle there, authorities said. Torrential rains in eastern and southern parts of Macedonia have flooded more than 12,000 acres and hundreds of houses since the beginning of this week.

2Deadly raid: President Benigno Aquino III accepted the resignation of the Philippines’ national police chief Friday, two weeks after a disastrous raid left 44 police commandos dead and put the country’s peace agreement with Islamic rebels in jeopardy. Aquino has faced searing criticism, including calls for his impeachment and resignation, since the raid, which the police say killed a top terrorism suspect. The dead police officers have been hailed as national heroes, and many Filipinos have criticized Aquino as not showing empathy and not taking responsibility for the officers’ deaths.

3Premier resigns: East Timor independence hero Xanana Gusmao resigned as prime minister Friday, stepping down ahead of an expected restructuring of the government next week. The former guerrilla leader spearheaded East Timor’s drive for independence when Indonesian rule ended in 2002. He was the new country’s first president, holding that position from 2002 until becoming prime minister in 2007. East Timor voted overwhelmingly in 1999 to end 24 years of brutal Indonesian occupation that had left more than 170,000 dead, but the country has struggled to develop economically. About half of its 1.2 million people live in poverty.

4Unwanted souvenir: Thousands of travelers to the Caribbean and nearby regions are coming home with an unwanted souvenir: a mosquito-borne virus. The virus, called chikungunya, causes severe, often disabling joint pain. Since it spread from Asia and Africa in late 2013, chikungunya has infected a million people in the Caribbean, Latin America and parts of South America and Mexico. In the U.S. alone, more than 2,300 travelers since last May have brought home the virus.

5Illegal spying: British spies acted illegally when they scooped up data about Britons’ electronic communications gathered by the U.S. National Security Agency, a court ruled Friday in a landmark judgment against Britain’s security services. But the judges said now that details of the practices are known, they are within the law. Britain’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which handles complaints against the intelligence services, ruled in a case brought by civil liberties groups against the electronic intelligence agency, GCHQ. It was the first time the tribunal has ruled against an intelligence agency.